According
to the pre-modern notion of relics it was possible to engender relics
by touch, by laying an object against the surface of a relic. Pope
Gregory the Great (supreme pontiff from 590 to 604) used the full
weight of his authority to encourage veneration for the relics of
the saints, and these were used to further the spread of the early
Christian church. In particular relics were laid under altar stones
of new churches, especially where these took over pagan sites of
worship, and small relics were often sewn into the cloths laid over
altar stones.

In
order to keep up with the demand for relics a factory of sorts was
set up in Rome, laying cloths on the sepulchre of Saint Peter; these
were called brandea, and became fully-functional relics in
themselves. As the demand for a material culture for the Christian
church grew with membership and martyrdom, the direct one-step link
extended to multiple steps, with the perception that there is no
loss of power no matter how many links there may be in a chain.
Bede describes the power of relics deriving from the death of St
Oswald in 641: "It has happened that people have taken soil
from the place where his body fell to the ground, have put it in
water, and by its use have brought great relief to their sick."

The
process of healing through indirect touch occurs in the New Testament,
Matthew 9. 20-22, where the woman suffering from a haemorrhage touches
Jesus garment. "Thy faith has made thee whole",
he says, though it is uncertain from this which faith is efficacious,
the faith in Jesus Christ or the faith that she will recover merely
by touching his garment  the faith that this will function
as directly as touching his skin.

We
continue to feel the draw of physical contact with "the things
of the great" in our secular society. The clothes of Diana
are highly prized, the subject of criminal trials and charity auctions
 even when the articles left in memory in royal parks between
her death and funeral were stolen, the perpetrators received criminal
sentences. We may not try on Nelsons uniform, sleep in the
Great Bed of Ware, write with Dickens pen, or practice on
Haydns piano.

Tom
Keating, the art forger, described how on visits to the National
Gallery he would surreptitiously touch the surfaces of canvases
and feel vibrations from the artists who had painted them.

However,
do things or people act as better links in chains of contact?

Partygoers
before the coronation of Edward VIII danced to a song entitled "I
danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince
of Wales". Barry Humphries as a child shook hands with Percy
Grainger, who had shaken hands with Delius, who had shaken hands
with Greig, who had shaken hands with Lizst, who had shaken hands
with Beethoven, who had shaken hands with Haydn, who had shaken
hands with Mozart. Is this cumulative, or merely transmitory ? Does
the hand-shake become more powerful the more it passes along a chain
of the great and the good, or could it have carried the presence
of Mozart along a chain of handshakes from doctors, teachers, news-vendors,
masseurs, footballers, gardeners, stationers apprentices,
and wax-chandlers? Is it essentially goal-oriented or passage-oriented?

In
594 the Empress Constantina asked Pope Gregory The Great (Pope from
590 to 604) for "the head or some other part of the body of
St Paul to deposit in the new church she was building" (Gregory
The Great, F Homes Dudden, London, 1905), and was offered instead
a piece of the fetters which had bound St Paul. She might have been
less pleased with a handshake from someone whose great-grandfather
had worked with a man whose cousins grandfather had bought
a loaf of bread from the grandson of the next-door neighbour of
the grand-daughter of the brother of the jailer who had put said
fetters on the wrists of Saint Paul. It may be that the thing that
has been in physical contact with the object of our desires acts
as a conduit better than a person partly because of its own inertness.

Applying
this to the secular, or possible semi-sacral environment of the
museum, it may be seen that everything is in contact with everything
else. Thus the specimen EA 52387 is in contact with specimen EA
32757 by virtue of being in contact with the floor of a case, which
is in contact with the floor of the room, which is in contact with
the floor of the case of specimen EA 32757, which is in contact
with specimen EA 32757. However, is the contact more potent, or
perceived as more potent, if the intermediary links are living beings,
particularly if they are articulate human beings, able to describe
the act of transmission of presence? If touching is perceived as
more potent than looking, does the added ingress into degrees of
taboo confuse, strengthen, weaken, or divert what may happen?

Thus
there can be specified three types of intermediary, human (deliberate
or incidental), deliberately placed inanimate, and environmental
inanimate. What effects do these produce and how do they differ,
and how to quantify the differences? Would Room 64 of the British
Museum feel a different sort of place if specimen EA 52387 were
to be put in contact with specimen EA 32757, through the medium
of a chain of individuals holding hands, with the outer two pressing
their hands against the glass of the case nearest to them? Would
there be a tingle of contact? If it were done in a thunderstorm,
would the charged atmosphere make the contact stronger? Is such
an act symbolic, virtual, or actual? How would it compare to a chair
leant against the case of specimen EA 52387 and supporting a walking-stick
resting on an ironing-board bearing a length of garden-cane laying
against the case of EA 32757? Is such an act symbolic, virtual,
or actual?